Todd Porter: Will these Browns be watchable?

It was no surprise that Pat Shurmur isn’t reading the NFL predictions. Most of what’s written about the Browns before training camp isn’t pretty.

CBSsports.com NFL expert Pete Prisco predicted a .... drum roll ... 1-15 season. The good news is that’s as bad it gets. Most predictions have the Browns winning four, five, and even — pray tell — six games. Someone just told me Thursday morning the Browns would win eight or more games. Ahem.

Really, though, does it matter how many games the team wins this year? It would be an improvement to start with, say, being watchable.

Many times last fall, admit it, you did lawn work after about 1:30 on a Sunday afternoon. That’s how pathetic the team was. Pulling weeds was more interesting than watching Shurmur pull teeth on an NFL Sunday.

Shurmur shrugged off the preseason beating his team is taking by prognosticators.

“It’s not my concern,” he said. “What I’m concerned about is getting our players ready to play, putting them out there, and watching them perform well. That’s what I’m concerned about. If they do that, then I think we’ll win games, more than the prognosticators say.”

He didn’t say which prognosticators.

This is the eve of Browns training camp, and in Northeast Ohio, it is like Christmas Eve. The team hasn’t lost a game. Rookie quarterback Brandon Weeden hasn’t thrown an interception. Shurmur hasn’t made a questionable third-down play call. And no one has been injured.

Scratch that.

Cleveland luck struck in the weight room in May when promising former first-round pick Phil Taylor tore a pectoral muscle lifting weights.

Weeden and third-overall pick Trent Richardson, though, add promise to the roster. Which is like infusing a concentrated dose of optimism into the orange-colored drinks Browns fans are already sipping.

Nevertheless, two talented players that any team in the NFL would add to their roster today is two more than usual.

Shurmur addressed his team Thursday.

“And that’s between me and them, but it’s a different message because I do know them now,” Shurmur said. “Last year, I was seeing these players literally for the first time, most of them, so you say things to people you first meet different than people you’ve had a chance to work with for a year.”

How many games can Shurmur win? Fans who want to be realists and not disappointed should set the ceiling at about five games. Las Vegas has the Browns’ win total at 51⁄2 games. Vegas isn’t broke for a reason.

Clearly, though, the Browns are hoping for more. The front office knows its fans are starving for something. Cleveland didn’t win a game in its own division last season. So let’s start there and try to steal one from the Bengals.

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The fact the Browns were aggressive in the supplemental draft and burned a second-round pick in 2012 for wide receiver Josh Gordon could offer proof of a couple of things. One, Gordon, general manager Tom Heckert believes, is a player.

And, perhaps more importantly, the Mike Holmgren regime is under some pressure to produce this season. Gordon in the supplemental draft may not have been a swing for the fence, but clearly they are trying to get a sacrifice fly out of it.

Maybe if the wind is blowing right all season, Gordon is a missing piece to a receiver corps that Colt McCoy didn’t have to work with last year.

I don’t know what the 2012 season will hold for Cleveland. By the time the final regular-season game is played Dec. 30 against Pittsburgh, it would be nice if the Browns were just taken seriously that weekend.

“We’re trying to win every game,” Shurmur said. “We are trying to win our division, which secures us a spot in the playoffs, and give us a chance to win the biggest one. That’s what we’re trying to do, regardless of how we finished last year. That’s what we talk about.”

Trying to win the division and every game is different than winning every game. The Browns tried to win last year. It’s hard to win in a league of front-line players when yours are well behind what everyone else is using.

Wins?

Five? Six? One?

Those are all tough pills to swallow. Knowledgeable fans won’t care about the record.

They want progress and some tangible evidence that Holmgren knows what he is doing in Cleveland. The standard Holmgren has to reach is obvious improvement. Anything less, and the Big Show may have a long drive out of Northeast Ohio on that Harley.